Episode #219 -- Xoaquin Flores and Unraveling the Alt Media Myopia

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:20):
Hello, and welcome to the Gold, Goats and Guns Podcast
for May twenty six, twenty twenty five. My name is Tomolowonga.
We have a lot to talk about it. It's episode
two nineteen. And with the weirdness that's coming out of
you know, is Trump or is he not going to
end the war in Ukraine? I think there's a lot
of real confusion out there that's going on. And over

(00:42):
the weekend I thought to myself, No, there's nobody else
I want to talk to right now than Joaquin Fores
to try and bring some sanity to what is happening
within both the normal media space as well as or
the undead media space as well as the alternative media space,
where I think the history on I said, now gone
full blown. So Joaquin, thank you so much for taking

(01:03):
the time this morning. How are you, sir?

Speaker 2 (01:06):
Thank you thanks for having me on today. Tom.

Speaker 1 (01:07):
It's good to talk to you. It's a it's a
pleasure and an honor. Thank you because I I we
were talking a little bit before we hit record. My
frustration with the way things are going and the commentary space.
I'm kind of I'm mostly happy with what I'm seeing
from the Trump administration. But it's very clear that we

(01:29):
have an entire alternative media space, both in the financial
markets and the geopolitical, and we'll stick mostly to geopolitical today.
Have I have no idea what's going on, and I
think they've lost their focus and they've lost their way,
and it's been really and it's my frustration line.

Speaker 3 (01:49):
It's boileth over.

Speaker 1 (01:50):
So if you do me a favor and just let's talk.
Let's talk about where Trump and Putin are right now,
because we're doing this on the morning when Trump the
morning after Trump tweeted out that Putin's got crazy and
all this stuff, and I want you to help me
break it all that down, okay for reality.

Speaker 2 (02:08):
People might remember back in the campaign in the twenty
twenty four that there was a similar incident where Trump
said that you know, look, I think Putin's changed. You know,
he might have gone mad. Something's not right. It's like
he wants. And then there was another one where he

(02:28):
was talking about how when he talked to Putin it
was like this. He was basically telling him, like, don't
do it, Lad, don't take Ukraine. Don't do it. He
said like that, don't do it, Lad. It was one
of the it was one of the great moments in
Trump TV entertainment history during the campaign, and yeah, what

(02:50):
a beautiful time to be alive. So we had So
what happens is we have two different times during this
campaign where he did this kfe with the you know,
Putin's bad and it always came during a time when
he was able to precept or you know, pre perceive
that there was going to be an attack on him

(03:12):
from the neokon right, And he's very good at like
preempting these by saying the thing that they might tell
him to say, so he can say at first, because
if you said it after, it would be like a capitulation.
So when he had the what happens with you know
Kellogg is he he's he condemns Russia's strikes and says

(03:36):
that it violates the Geneva Convention. And you know, these
are the person's second editions from in the seventies when
it was augmented. Been a while since I was in university,
but in the field of ir this is when the
Geneva Accords too, basically, but they're called additions one and
two come into force. And he's referring to like language

(03:58):
surrounding Article two two or thereabouts. Anyway, this is relating
to whether it's excessive. Basically you could say, like if
that civilians are being targeted versus hitting military infrastructure that
happens to be where civilians live, and you know it
just because it's very clear that that the targets that

(04:20):
Russia hit, Like you've been away for like a week
or so, and in the past few days there was
this big exchange where basically Kiev launched like seven hundred
drones at Moscow and then Moscow retaliated, and then you
had Zelenski say, you know, Trump is silent on this,

(04:42):
and he complained about it, and then then the Russians
continued to strike for like another day or two. A
lot of a lot of things happening, and there there
was a breakdown locally on the Ukrainian front in the
past twenty four hours, and the Russians connected up number
of provinces like all at once that people thought might

(05:03):
take weeks to happen. Is this a sign of things
to come? So this is all like in the background, right,
so you know it's it's so Trump gets ahead of
the curve and he says, what you know, Putin's crazy
or whatever. And but what what isn't crazy is the
fact that any sanctions that they put on Russia won't

(05:25):
have any real consequence on the outcome of the war.
And if that's the cost of doing business, like from
the I would almost call it like an investment on
the Russian side. And you're talking about that just the
cost of doing business, and that just calculates against your
ROI or whatever. I mean at this point, it's it's
that that transactional. I mean, so Putin's just basically been

(05:50):
given Trump, you know, more time. And it's not that
Trump's god or whatever, but I mean he can he
can present some obstacles if he wanted to, that were
that would get in the way or make it more
painful or more expensive for the Russian side. It's not that,
you know, in a conventional sense, you're not going to
want to go nuclear if you can keep things on
a conventional level. But there's not that much that Europe

(06:12):
in US can do militarily except make a bigger headache
that could create further problems down the line, but it
wouldn't really prevent Russia from its operation in Ukraine. So
I think with that logic. That's that's you know where
the Trump administration has like posited its messaging during this
you know, particular time in the media cycle. If that

(06:32):
breaks down, Yeah, so.

Speaker 1 (06:35):
Now that's it's really thank you, because I think it's
important that, you know, if you think about where we
are and then this is all happening. In my mind,
I look back and I look at it and go, well,
clearly we're having a Senate revolt over the budget Reconciliation
bill at the same time. So I look at this

(06:56):
and I say, huh, what a shock that's going to
the usual suspects in the Senate are going to hold
up this bill, which they all know they're lying about it,
you know, adding to the deficit and all this other
stuff because all the that's all CBO projection stuff that
has nothing to do with this bill. Steven Miller just
finally put out a tweet this morning which I retweeted,
and I'm going to link in the show notes to

(07:17):
this for people to understand what's actually going on legally
with this bill, because I think it's very important because
every because no one gets it and I didn't even
get it, and then I read this, I'm like, oh, Okay,
you know they're all I just knew instinctively they were.

Speaker 3 (07:32):
Lying about this, right yeah.

Speaker 1 (07:34):
And you know and when he's I'm like, oh, so,
what they're really doing is they're using this as blackmailt
to get Trump to come up, just to stay focused
on Ukraine in some in some way, matter, shape or form.
And then you have Frederick Murders come out this morning
and say there's now no limits on the what Ukraine
can do in retaliation. We're taking all the restrictions off

(07:57):
their use of their weapons on rush up. And I'm like, oh, oh,
so that's the that's the gambit. It's I think that's
I mean, am I wrong about that? Or what do
you think is?

Speaker 3 (08:07):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (08:07):
No, I think that's about right.

Speaker 3 (08:09):
No.

Speaker 2 (08:09):
And the dynamic that has been created is that this
is what's going to further the SMO until some you know,
ultimate very small end of Ukraine as a rump state,
because like they've just recently announced the one hundred kilometer
Cordon Sanataire that effectively claims an additional you know, three

(08:32):
regions more or four, yeah, comes out to four four
altogether with the Cordon sanataire and then Propetrovsk it would yeah,
I think b bring it to five five more.

Speaker 3 (08:51):
So we're talking about Sumi Kharkoff.

Speaker 2 (08:55):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, Chernigov, Well, in this in the cordon,
right in the cord, you would have Chernigov and Sumi
and Kharkov, and then they've the Russian forces like a
week or two ago, definitely have established numerous footholds on
the Ukrainian side of the De Nieper, and so you're

(09:16):
going to have obviously there has to be operations for
Kearsen and Zappudogia as just at that. But when they
declared from the northward basically to protect like Belgorod and
Kursk and whatnot, that they're going to have this one
hundred kilometer from the north Cordon Santa Terra. But when
you map out that one hundred kilometers, it's taking up

(09:38):
about like two thirds or three fourths almost of those regions,
one of them. Chernigov, I think it takes all of it.
First that assume me. I think it would take all
of it. And just from that one hundred kilometers, and
the calculation like what was being floated a month ago
was like fifty to the maybe thirty to fifty kilometers,

(09:59):
So when one hundred kilometers was announced, it's like that's
those are the whole regions. So that's it. I mean,
they're going to do it. So, you know Trump saying
Trump saying that that Putin is crazy, Like that's exactly
what the you know, the he needs to like, uh,
make sure that his base at different levels of the
ring of you know, these concentric circles around him, is

(10:22):
gonna resonate with his message. And you're gonna have the
Fox News neo cons come on, come on and say like, uh,
you know, Trump needs to be you know, tougher on Russia,
and doesn't he see that like Vladimir blah blah blah.
So he gets ahead of the curve and he just
says the thing that that there's going to be anything

(10:43):
that could be used against them. It costs nothing to say,
you know, it costs nothing to say, and it doesn't
come with any teeth and all of the things. You
know what they're so stupid about. This is just there's
forgive my French member, they're so fucking stupid.

Speaker 3 (11:00):
That's okay, You're welcome this podcast.

Speaker 2 (11:03):
You know, I appreciate, you know, it's just it's so
frustrating you know, the dysgenic Midwich that have continued to
you know, promulgate this bizarre equation. Look, it's so clear
that if Trump is going to be looking at the
how the future of this conflict was working. The logic

(11:26):
of the Biden administration, the logic of the European Union
was to arm and arm in arm, Ukraine and further.
And that was what was creating the the catalyst of
Russia increasing its efforts and also on the economic side,
the import, substitution, industrialization, like that was the energy required

(11:48):
to do it. Like having a nemesis, as Trump also
said about Iran that even if you don't really want
to be an enemy, basically it's like this is just
the script. It's good to have an enemy because it organizes,
it motives you, you know. And what what the whole
equation that the whole Western strategy was based on was

(12:08):
the energy consumed to make the operation itself successful. So
that's what that was the whole logic of it. That's
why Russia guaranteed to win it. So Trump coming in
with what he's doing is just you know, taking credit
for an eventual outcome and mitigating some of the damage
to the West really more than anything. But so people

(12:30):
don't get that. So if the people that are going
to say, oh, no, we want to push for more war,
that could help expedite the SMO. Like it's take your pick.
You see that, that's what's so great about this, So
take your pick with which way you want this to go,
because you can have either europe Army h ze Lensky

(12:55):
to the teeth further and further. You can have a
cease or peace talks that are designed not to go anywhere.
But like also by the Russian side, they're designed not
to go anywhere because they don't need to go anywhere.
So you know, either way you're gonna have an outcome
of Russia has been very clear that in all of

(13:18):
their messaging from directly, like verbatim from Medvedev, from you know,
any any number of normal regular spokespeople, whether it's Pescov,
whether it's Lavrov, whether it's Zakharova, if they're all going
to tell you that there has to be regime change
in Kiev. This is not just like Peskov misstating things

(13:40):
or something. This is what everyone has said consistently. So
it's not about elections now, it's not about any it's
not about a ceasefire. There's no ceaspire, there's no Minsk.
There's not going to be another Minsk agreement. They've also
said that, so they've been very clear, we're never gonna
do again. Putin just said, uh, you know, ceasepire and
then let's see what happens. Right, So that's it. So

(14:02):
they're gonna you know, Odessa interesting questions. But but yeah,
it's the Trump knows this, and why why would he
be so stupid to positions his position himself politically against
the inevitable? Like why not make it look like that
was his deal?

Speaker 3 (14:19):
Right?

Speaker 2 (14:20):
Like right? So like what we had been saying for
a long time on the EXCEP live stream, you know,
months and months ago, that that Russia really couldn't say
the quiet part out loud when Zelensky was trying to
call their bluff and Zelensky was trying to say with
with good reason actually, like Zelenski actually made sense. You know,
it was co conduced and whatnot. But if you actually

(14:42):
break down when he was saying there was a reason
to it, because he's saying, what is Russia willing to
give up? Right, which is the biggest scam because it's
like there's a very big difference tom as you appreciate
between trading something that you have to trading your rights
to pursue it in the future. It's not the same thing.
You're not trading at and apples r at that point, right,

(15:02):
this is like expectation. This is like expectation stuff. It's
a whole different animal. It's time traveling, property and ownership
and conceptual. It's like turning it on his head. So
the guy's like, so, what's Selenski says, like what's Russia
giving up? Right? And Uh, It's like, well, Celenski, you're
not giving up anything. You've lost it, like giving up

(15:24):
the right to it. Like so Russia's going to give
up the right to what you know? Like that makes
no sense they have with you know what they have
fuck an idiot, right, So, but the Russians can't say
the truth, which is like what we'd be giving up
taking all of Ukraine, right, you know, like like if
you if we can agree now at these borders, like
we'd be you know, like this, we wouldn't take all

(15:46):
of Ukraine. And they couldn't say that because of international law.
It's bad pr But they've been kind of expressing that
through Medvedev and you know, but but Trump actually said it. It
was like a couple of weeks ago and he was
being pressed on the same thing. Yeah, he said, like,
what they're giving up is taking all of Ukraine. So
he gets it. You know, it's obvious that the that
the Trump and like, not that this even drives policy,

(16:09):
by the way, just for idiots out there, but just
independent thought of this, it's very clear that that Trump
and Putin have some affection or some friendship or something.
You know, there's some chemistry, there's some you know, level
that they operate on together where they appear to like
each other. And I think that's an actual fact. So

(16:32):
based on that, I don't you know, and many other things,
and we're not having to base on their personal relationships
or speculation thereof of course, but just on the whole
geopolitical scene and understanding the media and the messaging and
how Trump does things. How someone could think that Trump
is crazy or you know that Trump just like changes
his mind, or Trump is zigzagging, or he doesn't have

(16:53):
a plan, or he doesn't know what he's doing, because
now he thinks Trump now he's going to say Putin's crazy.
He's like, no, man, just because you don't understand something
doesn't that people don't fucking know what they're doing. Like
those are two different things.

Speaker 3 (17:03):
Yeah, no, that's absolutely correct.

Speaker 1 (17:04):
But there's so many people who want to believe that
they know more, they understand more than what's actually happening.
I'll be, I'll be, I'll be. You know, let's let's
take that one step further. What you just laid out
with I think is very powerful, which is that ultimately
Trump understands that, you know, all Europe on let me
go put this way, all Europe is ever going to

(17:25):
offer Russia is that which they've already stolen, Like, hey,
we've stolen all of this from you. We'll give it
back to you if you stop the war, and and
Putin's like, I don't want it back. And there's clearly
we're talking about for the most part, the three hundred
billion dollars worth of foreign exchange reserves and all the
rest of it. And the Russians are like, look, they
went to when they went to Istanbul, and you know, Zoonski,

(17:49):
you know, played his game, and they put their offer
on the table and it was really funny how that
played out, or just to bear with me for a minute.
So what's her name, the woman who runs RT. I'm
now blanking on her name right now. Yeah, she's she's great, right.

Speaker 3 (18:07):
See.

Speaker 1 (18:08):
They they come out and the news report hits that, well,
Russia offered to, you know, give us these four and
if you don't, you know, and if you don't agree,
then tomorrow it'll be five. And she's like, no, actually,
my people were there, it was eight. And now we're
talking to eight regions of.

Speaker 2 (18:22):
That's the ones I'm talking about. That's it?

Speaker 3 (18:24):
Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1 (18:25):
And then like and then less than a week later,
Putin gives her a freaking metal did you see that?

Speaker 2 (18:31):
Right?

Speaker 1 (18:31):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (18:32):
Yeah, yeah?

Speaker 3 (18:33):
Are you are you not getting it? Yeah? Are you
not getting it?

Speaker 1 (18:37):
Folks like very clear, we're going to do this, and
and I think the and and you can feel the
desperation from everyone at this point, because it's very obvious
the mud is dried up and now is the time
for the Russians to put their people in place and
start pushing across multiple far parts of the front line.

(18:58):
And they're now taking you know, the of square kilometers
or hundreds of square klometers a day, and you know
it's going to continue to be more of the same.
And until they get exactly what they want, they're in
no hurry to finish this. Every time Trump opens his
mouth and gives us some kind of neo coon talking point,
the Russian economy is not only built for war, it's

(19:19):
not built for anything else. You hear all these this nonsense, right,
then it's not wrong. He's not wrong when he says that.
But that's all just red meat for the Fox News crowd.
And again it's a way of him saying, look, X,
Y and Z, now I need you to I'm I'm
with you on this stuff. Now, let's get back to

(19:40):
fixing stuff domestically. And of course you can't. Those people
will not give him that domestically. They won't give him
those domestic wins. So they're jamming him up in the
courts over over immigration, they're jamming him up on Capitol
Hill over the budget reconciliation, and they're trying to jam
him up on foreign po all at the same time.

(20:01):
And I find that the whole thing. It's so I
don't know about you, but it's just so very obvious
to me. They're fighting this war exactly the way the
Ukrainians are fighting been told to fight the war on
the front, which is, don't give up an inch, you know,
and keep you know, hoping that tomorrow will be able
to craft some kind of some kind of exist strategy
from this.

Speaker 3 (20:20):
It's not going to happen.

Speaker 1 (20:21):
Every day, Max on the ground get worse for Ukraine,
and every day on the ground, you know, the Democrats
lose even more support domestically, and you know, I just
find it funny, and all they have left is forcing
hoping to force the to activate this.

Speaker 3 (20:38):
I think the word I'm looking for activate the.

Speaker 1 (20:40):
Gope the usual suspects in the Senate to blackmail Trump
into going into into giving them their cookie on something.
And Ukraine is one of them, or Israel is another one.
I mean, I didn't even get into Israel, Israel Gazi yet,
but it's and Iran, it's all. But it's all basically
the same play happening over there as well. So you know, uh,

(21:04):
every day, like the Russians are going to continue to
enforce facts on the ground. You know, I found it
funny that I remember talking without my what Dexter White
about this, and he kept saying, well, obviously what was
happening with Kursk going back to last year, the Curse
invasion was meant to, well, we're going to try and
take some Russian territory and then trade that three or

(21:24):
four to one for some Ukrainian territory and under war,
and then the Russians took all that back and now
they're taking area in sue me. I'm like, so do
you want to keep anything? You're gonna have to give
up even more like and every day you're gonna have
to give up more and give up more, give but more,
And we're watching that play out in real time.

Speaker 3 (21:41):
You want to hold on to.

Speaker 1 (21:41):
The nipper Pravrosque, Great, we're gonna take hundreds of square
kilometers then April Rosk, but you're gonna give us all.

Speaker 2 (21:47):
Assumi and Zelenski, the government cannot agree to a single concession,
and they can even publicly say that they would in
principle agree to can say ession of territory on any terms,
because it would completely undermine his entire position, you know.
So it's just not supportable based upon the regime and

(22:12):
the relationship with Europe. Because if the political problem is
that he can't proceed, then then the EU would just
then go for like an Obama, which Zelenski basically was,
and they would just do another Obama, which is what
the Russians are saying. No, that we don't care about
what process you can have in Ukraine that will produce

(22:35):
another Zelenski. They're not interested in elections before the SMO
is over. And that's why they said, and it sounded
like it was a concession because they said elections in
you Yeah, they said elections in Ukraine are not necessary
for us to like, you know, to end the war.
It's not what they thought. It meant. Yeah, they meant

(22:56):
they meant the other way.

Speaker 3 (22:57):
Yeah, I'll be I'll be honest. I missed that.

Speaker 1 (23:00):
You know, this is what happens when you actually take
something close to a vacation for a few days and
you miss all this, you miss some of the nuance.
So so let's I do actually want to keep like
making this point, which is that we have a lot
of people on in the alternative media space who keep

(23:24):
missing all of this stuff, and I think they're missing
it in every area. They're missing it financially, they're missing
it domestically, they're missing it to you politically, and and.

Speaker 3 (23:34):
You know, I've been saying for a while now.

Speaker 1 (23:36):
I've been saying for probably about a month now that
by the end of the summer, there's going to be
a whole lot of carnage in the space because a
lot of people will have made really terrible decisions without
because they've ab reacted, as opposed to analyzed the situation,

(23:56):
and by ab reacting to every twist and turn, because
they feel like they've got to be out there every day.

Speaker 3 (24:02):
Saying something or worse than that, having in my mind,
they have they have.

Speaker 1 (24:10):
I think a lot of people have the wrong model
as to what's going on, and it's a it's kind
of downstream of UH in many ways. I think it's
downstream of their refusal to accept the fact that the
game board has fundamentally changed. And I've seen it within
the financial markets, and because I see it in the

(24:31):
financial markets, and I see it within the bond market,
and the way we get back into my whole sofa
versus libor and all that stuff, when you start to
realize that the United States is setting up a different
financial system for itself right by by not tying that
directly to the outcomes geopolitically then you've missed like you've

(24:55):
you've missed the plot, You've missed the story. So none
of this makes any sense? Is so you have a
modeling that that doesn't work. So yeah, well so one
of the things that so let's talk about what the
practical limits of what we're dealing with in terms of
Russia Ukraine? What do you Let's talk about time frame

(25:16):
for this summer. Let's just start there and then we'll
see what it winds up. How what do you I mean,
I know you're following this a lot more closely than
I am, because I'm trying to focus on literally literally
everything at once, and more of the financial markets than
I am the geopolitical stuff on the ground. So what
do you what do you realistically think the Russians are
going to be able to do with this summer, which

(25:39):
is when you can do the most effectively, the most
maneuver warfare in Ukraine, especially in this area of Ukraine.
What do you think they're actually going to be able
to accomplish in the next four to five or three
or four months.

Speaker 2 (25:53):
So it's a very good question. I think it's maybe
one of the very big pressing questions that's an excellent question,
sixty four thousand dollars question in some sense because it
gets into the broader subject of complex systems in collapse
or complex systems collapse, because it follows the principle of

(26:15):
like the straw that broke the camel's back. So I mean,
if you were to like just measure out for example,
like you know, rate times time over distance based upon
the attrition rate or whatever, you would come at like
some figure, you know, like, well, the Russians are you know,
seem to be moving on a you know, across all

(26:36):
the critical you know, maybe six or seven eight different
points simultaneously. They're you know, moving five to fifteen kilometers
a day. You see what I mean. So you could
map that out right. But the thing is that there
are other signs of breakdowns of the A if you
at some of these localities that previously had not been encountered,

(26:57):
that are like, you know, more reminiscent of the breakdown
and part of the army that occurred leading up to
the original Istanbul talks and the peace agreement that was
rescinded by the Ukrainian side. On on Biden and Johnson's
strong recommendation right to Zelenski.

Speaker 3 (27:15):
Right, So.

Speaker 2 (27:18):
The Istanbul format establishes these things, and the Russians basically tied,
as you said, like the Istanbul format to this recent
Istanbul discussion, and the Russians the Ukrainians rejected the idea
that it was, which is why they want to continue
with the Vatican. But Istanbul's actually the symbolic of the

(27:39):
fact that the formula, as you've discussed long and you've
been nailing by the way, that the that the longer
that Ukrainians take to agree to terms to peace, the
more that Ukraine loses territorially, right. I mean, that's the
form that's the formula you have it. So now, in

(28:01):
terms of the breakdown of the a FU over the
course of the summer, based upon you know, the good
weather conditions for a lot of maneuver warfare, the ongoing
war of attrition, which has been very drone and artillery
has created like a softening of so many of these
positions that order, breakdown of order and morale is very

(28:25):
significant across the Ukrainian front. So the main objective if
there was a compulsion or need to move beyond the
let's say strategic opportunities of moving in once you have
you know, let's say, drone superiority over an area and

(28:47):
then you basically evict them and then you move in.
Is very reminiscent actually of like second generation warfare, except
it's using drones in lieu of artillery, where the soldiers
are already going into an area that basically is drone
artillery secure. And so the Russians, for political reasons inside
of Russia actually like because it's Russians feel the war

(29:08):
more and more, and the attacks from the Zelensky side
have actually helped the Russian side kind of realized that
the war is real. You talk to like people maybe
like Tim Kirby and folks that live in Russia, they're
going to tell you, you know, like for a lot of Russians,
there's not a war going on. They don't feel it. Economically,
it's if they care to watch it what's going on
in the news. They do, but not everyone's into that
because they're just you know, people living in society and

(29:31):
living their lives, so they haven't felt the war. It's
not some nationalists cause in Russia for people that it's
not imposed on people that are not already into the
patriotic scene. You see. So, but these attacks from Zelenski,
increasingly on urban areas, have galvanized more public opinion. So
based on that metric, it's possible that the equation I'm

(29:53):
talking about that generally preferences low Russian losses, I mean
very low Russian losses. We're talking like they won't even
go into somewhere if they think they're going to lose
one for seven or one for eight, and optimally in
operations they're achieving like one to fourteen and one to twenty.
So yeah, because they're doing it's it's it's second generation

(30:13):
warfare in terms of the uh, you know, totally obliterating,
you're not relying on as much you know, soldier shooting
at each other. Right, it's the drones are going in,
softening them, getting them in such a battered positions that
soldiers do go in. There is some fighting, but it's
a lot of cleanup. And the numbers are lopsided already.
I mean, the Russians are going in with overwhelming numbers

(30:37):
to achieve overwhelming differences in casualties as well. I mean
that's it's so they're coming in five to one, twenty
to one and not getting many guys taken out as
a consequence of the condition of the a few. So
it's a lot of opportune and strategic opportunities. So and

(30:58):
they've improved their ability to real time communicate those two
the approval level of command, which had previously been historically
like a deficiency in the Russian Army in terms of
the formalities of their command structure and restrictions on innovation
or strategic or contingencies in real time. So that so

(31:21):
then I'll like circle directly back to your question. This
summer is a time frame in which a straw that
broke the camel's back scenario could occur across maybe two
or three critical places in along the front that could
maybe result in you know, back to Semonian's threat so
to speak, or promise if you will, maybe two of

(31:46):
those could if you had breakdowns. But I have this
like projected as a conflict that easily continues like another
eighteen months, where in other words, within eighteen months the
straw that broke the camel's back scenario will happen. I mean,
that's always how it happens. It's just you know, because
I'm just saying you can get projected out by the

(32:06):
kilometers and the attrition rate and everything like that, but
that that doesn't that that will give you a very
prolonged end point. Militaries don't operate that way. The society
breaks down and everything breaks down first, So before the
last man you know, you know his gun, it's not
how it goes down. You have mass surrenders.

Speaker 3 (32:23):
Yeah. Yeah, it's effectively what I was.

Speaker 1 (32:27):
And that's thank you for that, because I think that's
very important to understand that it looks stable, but it's
really metastable, Like the front line looks stable, but it's
very metastable, very it's not anti fragile. It's not a cape,
it's not a it's not a it's not a scenario
of the Russians are incompetent at war. They may have
been unprepared to fight the war. They eventually had the

(32:50):
they eventually had the fight and have had to shift
their tactics and everything else. But it's twenty twenty five.
It's not twenty twenty two or twenty twenty three anymore.
Everybody is messaging that the word that the way the
war is being fought has changed completely. Even Zelensky is
now you're trying to use Russia's competence at drone warfare
and other things as a means by which to argue

(33:10):
that he needs more stuff. So that's clearly the tell
that they're losing badly on the battlefield. I've heard some
things to say.

Speaker 3 (33:20):
That the the.

Speaker 1 (33:22):
Ukrainians in many ways are fighting with the weaponry that
has already been pledged to them and from the Americans
and from the from the West up that you know,
from the Biden administration, and that's due to run out
in the next four to six weeks. And if that
is the case, then we're very definitely looking at the
slowly and then all at once kind of scenario, which

(33:43):
is why you're feeling this. I think we're all feeling this, uh,
this level of desperation that's coming from all sides, and
I just you know, it's like, it's not my criticism
of the media space to start this podcast is not
from that perspective. It's not that they're wrong that Russia

(34:05):
is winning the war. That's plainly obvious to everyone. It's
the way Trump is handling it that they've missed completely.
Trump is actually, as you've pointed out, I think, you know,
acceding to the reality of the situation, and he has
not pledged any more support for them. We have people,

(34:27):
and I'll be honest with you, I just think we're
at the point now where we have people who speak
English and think that, you know, Trump should just wipe
is you know, they need him to wipe his hands
completely of the war and of the support and just
have it happen tomorrow. But they want that, They want
that everyone. They want the Epstein list out there tomorrow.
They want you know, two trillion dollars come from the

(34:47):
budget tomorrow. They want this, they want this, they want that,
and none of those things are people.

Speaker 2 (34:51):
You can't even put out evidence that's like part of
the investigation that charges haven't been pressed on. You can't
even release you can even you can't even release to
the public incriminating information that that I mean, you could,
you would, you would, you would contaminate your potential juries,
you could. You can't release on talking about Epstein. You

(35:13):
can't release to the public in this part of the
legal process, that stuff because you haven't had charges pressed.
So it's not a matter of discovery, it's not. It
could it could allow people to destroy, uh, creminating evidence
before charges of press I mean, it's just it's just
I mean, on and on and on, right, But anyway,
but yeah, like you said, people don't think these things through,
and they don't they because they think about what they

(35:33):
themselves would do in that situation, and they just imagined
that if they were like Trump, that they would be
like a om, the god on the powerful entity or
something that could just do, you know, do things or
you know, everything is bargaining, and there are bargaining teams,
and when you're the president or a head of a

(35:54):
big company, the bargaining teams that represent different interests in
the company or the country, and the biggest it's getting
getting your obstacle. And I speak from personal experience that
negotiated multi billion dollar deals between counterparties is one of
the parties. And I understand you have a negotiating team,
and when you have the negotiating team at this level,
you know you have to manage potential dissent. And the

(36:18):
biggest thing that's going to happen is you're going to
have someone who says, you know, this should be our proposal,
this is what we should do. Now, you, as chief negotiator,
know this is totally fucking unworkable. You know what's going
to happen. You know how it's not going to work right,
But they're going to keep saying that we should have
if you don't hear that, if you don't approach it
the way I'm suggesting, the way that Trump approaches things,

(36:39):
and how the art of the deal, getting your own side,
your own fucking house and order works is that you
have to walk through the stages with people like people
are not in your fucking head. We have to get
out of the sillipsist mentality that all the information that
even people on your own team are working with, you
know you're on the same page. You know they might
have heard something. Everyone has egos, everyone has history. We're
not talking about twenty five years old. People were talking

(37:00):
about a bunch of guys in their fifties, sixty seventies
that know what they're doing. They have pretty You know,
you can't teach an old dog nutricks. So you have
to read pill them by walking them through the whole
fucking steps on a bargaining team. This is how it goes.
And so you have President of the United States represents
all these different verticals of American society, and they have
to be represented, the economic, geopolitical, military, industrial, so on

(37:24):
and so forth. In on the American side, you know,
you have wit cops saying his thing, Kellogg piping up
this way in that way. So now this is important
to walk, to walk your whole team through this, because
if you don't say, okay, let's try your way and
then see how it fails, they're gonna be fucking biting

(37:44):
at your heels for the rest of the whole fucking
goddamn time, and you might not even have the consensus
you need in house to ta on on with the
other side. You know, you're gonna have constant sabotage. They're
gonna have credibility because they can hold out that their
idea hasn't been tried. So you have to go. You
have to all right, let's propose the stupid thing. Let's
propose the stupidest thing. Let's propose that Plutin's lost his mind.

(38:08):
And you know, because that's what you're that's what you're
gonna say that I haven't said, and that you're gonna say.
The problem is I haven't said it, even though I've
said it when I was campaigning. You know, are we
going to do sanctions on Russia. Yeah, you can. You
can do more sanctions. You want to put a Linda
what is Lindsay Graham saying a five hundred percent tariff

(38:30):
on countries that trade with Russia. That's like, that's crazier
than the than the I mean, it's not crazier. That
was a strategic move, but it would be crazy now.
But that's like the move when when the tariffs were
first talked about and you had whatever three hundred four
hundred percent interest with China being tossed around, It's like,
you can't, You're not going to do business. You're going
to put a tariff on countries that do business with Russia.

(38:55):
That's basically everyone that was your problem or when you
were playing or you know, uh game of tear offf brinkmanship.
But he just is total chaos.

Speaker 1 (39:07):
And and and and that chaos is of course the
strategy on the part of Trump's opponents, which is to
create as much so as much to descend as possible,
and as I see it, cleave off the weakest parts
of his support. The easiest people to get on that
are the ones with oppositional defiance disorder known as the libertarians.
And because they just you know, they can't build anything,

(39:29):
they can only criticize. They didn't get their cooking, so therefore,
you know, we're just going to sit here and snipe
at their heels. And it's the same thing with the
the Budget Reconciliation Bill, and and you know, watching that
play itself out and watching you know, Trump's wrong, not wrong.
The more the more I dig into it, I'm like, no,
Thomas massive is grand standing, Ran Paul's grand standing, and

(39:49):
the fact that they're doing so when they should be
helping him get this thing through clearly so that he
can then ignore Congress for the next eighteen months because
he won't need them for anything legislatively for the next
eighteen months going into the midterms. But obviously, this is
again one of those one of those things that like
the Ukrainian front Line, as you just described that that
straw of the work the Campbell's back, well, the same

(40:11):
thing with this Budget Reconciliation bill, Like they fail to
stop this, then they lose everything else because then they
don't need Congress for any other and then their and
their asset, which is the thin majorities and the fake
majorities about the House and the Senate walk they're taking
off the board. That's what this bill will do if

(40:32):
it passes, because it will give Trump the legislative when
that he needs, like to run the table on these people.

Speaker 3 (40:38):
So of course they're going to fight him tooth and
call on, of course.

Speaker 1 (40:40):
And of course people are now are are outing themselves
as either having not a strategic bone in their fucking bodies,
which most of them don't. Certainly when it comes to libertarians,
they don't have a strategic bone in their goddamn body.
Or you know, you're now watching the Europeans use that
in every way to try and draw, to try and
create wedges, and we watch it in the financial markets,

(41:00):
we watch it bloomberg over the tariffs and everything else.
But I'm like, I'm all the way down the line.
I'm like, six months from now we're wlng and be
looking at road kill in the in all of these spaces,
not just in the media, not less in the unders.

Speaker 2 (41:15):
To Baiant syndrome. No, man, I'm just sorry, I was
just I was just ruminating on that now exactly. It
shares a lot there. I mean, there are we're not
talking about all libertarians, of course, but there are like
so many libertarians that share, like with so many Marxists
and communists, like one very similar trait is that their
whole political worldview is like based upon some fundamental inability
to have like properly individuated, you know, along the way

(41:39):
in life, and everything is like, uh, you know, some
conflict with like an imaginary authority, an imaginary father. It's
like the deprivation of the realization of the ego, and
everything is totally fucking soabsistic. Everything is like what I
would do and how this is smarter? And let me
tell you this is why liberal propaganda works, because it's
an appeal to this type of narcissism. It's an appeal

(42:00):
to this type of belief that you know, it's it's
it's it's a total Dunning Kruger thing. It's like, people
don't know how much one has to know to fucking
manage these things and to you know, how how how
what level of life experience and dealings and expertise is involved.
It's not about you know, I don't have that experience.

(42:20):
Very few people do, you know, And and it's so
it's totally bizarre when it's just you know, that is
one of the things. It's the the flattery of you know,
in a lot of liberal societies. Of course you want meritocracy.
Of course you want to provide education so that you
can pull up the best from from the whole public,
of course, you know. But but the idea that that

(42:44):
you know, that this that that the people in power
are fundamentally these oaks or these morons that keep making
mistakes and like we're just so smart to criticize, like
you said, I mean, there are some very problematic, you know,
intellectual movements in history, let's just say, that have focused
on critique without actually delving into the arena of construction.

(43:07):
We have focused on criticism without actually offering a viable alternative,
and there's no realistic you know.

Speaker 3 (43:14):
And I know, I know, you're absolutely right.

Speaker 1 (43:16):
This is actually something that's that's become very very obvious
to me over the course of the last couple of years,
and I've begun picking out people and movements.

Speaker 3 (43:27):
You know, I'll give you a perfect example.

Speaker 1 (43:30):
I started calling them the zero heade set, Like when
I know full well, you know, from like first hand authority,
that those that run zero hedge are only in it
for the advertising money, and they put up whatever the
hell they want in order to run their their thing.
I ran into it because the minute I started going
down the rabbit hole saying, well, maybe the Fed's working

(43:50):
for us, I noticed that none of those articles got
published on zero Edge, when previously, if I published an article,
it was up within six hours, right. And after a
while I realized that, oh, this is just about criticism,
because criticism sells. This isn't about solutions. And so now
I've become very very you know, okay, yeah, And I

(44:10):
saw it firsthand, and then I.

Speaker 3 (44:12):
Started to apply it all all everywhere.

Speaker 1 (44:14):
And it's not just my ego. I don't funk whether
I get published on zero heads anymore. Hell, I don't
even write publicly anymore, because what's the point, right, right,
because it's better to have a nuanced conversation with people
about these things, write some you know, or whatever. So
my marketing strategy is not what I'm talking about here.
What I'm saying now is that ultimately what's important is

(44:36):
that you start to you start to recognize that behavior everywhere,
and you don't have people who are looking for, you know,
here's the current problem, here's a potential solution. They're not
like doing those two things you know, they're just doing
here are the problems, Here are the problems. Here are
the problems, and they're just feeding the anxiety pimps who

(44:56):
are then using that to to slice and dice and
divide and rule. And it's a classic scio. I mean,
am I wrong about that the way I say it?

Speaker 2 (45:09):
You know, no, it is it's I when I think about,
like you're talking about your in your breakdown criticism of
alternative media and how they're they're large, you know, trolling
operations and in the long term, it's it's casting a net,
you know, and you're reading people in you have talking

(45:30):
points and you grab you are able to absorb in
your into your audience, you know, people that also are
connected to other audiences. Uh, And so you promote a
certain line. We won't name names, but like, uh, unless
you care too, you can talk about you can mention names.
But we're just talk about alternative media and people let's

(45:50):
say that are you know, let's say even in the
Russian or pro Russian alternative media, for example, you have
very very very similar cases of like trump to rangement syndrome.
And you know what what you see time and time
again is is either like a shallowness that you expect
from otherwise deeper people or people more capable people, and

(46:12):
you're like, are you pandering? Are you like what? There's
still attached to the idea that in the United States
there's like a Democratic Party that can be reformed without
agreeing with Trump, right, like, like, I don't want to
live in a one party dictatorship. I don't want the
United States to be a Republican dictatorship. I mean, there's

(46:33):
there's a place, a very important place for a Democratic Party.
There has to be a new lease online that we
have to have competitive politics. I don't want to see
a three fourth or seven eights, you know, country controlled
by non competitive politics. But there has to be some
but but but the Democratic Party and it's its present
incarnation is just on self destruct mode. I mean they

(46:54):
don't have they haven't landed on anything that resonates with
people outside of a literally dying demographic. So I mean
you have maybe ten or fifteen percent of adults the
United States have a college education and then a of
a bachelor's degree something like that isn't a twenty yeah,
fifteen percent issue around there. It's increased about I think

(47:17):
sixty percent or's seventy percent in some places of those
graduates are women. And then you have it's very unlikely
for people to have to be like Democrat hardline supporters
if they don't come from that that university mill, and
not all, not all people that go through that mill become,

(47:37):
you know, hardline Democrats, And a hardline Democrat is not
a far leftist. The hardline Democrat is like a Hillary
Clinton peak Buddhage edge, you know, leftists or Democrats rather, so,
you know, they're in it for Obama. They love Obama,
they love you know, Corey Booker, they love AOC and

(47:59):
their politics has come to an end and they've been
they've been working against big data analytics for so long.
I mean, their whole strategy from Zuckerberg to when what's
his face Dorsey was running Twitter, their whole strategy was
a censorship to keep from the evolution of the dissemination

(48:20):
of ideas reaching the fruition that it finally did yep.
And I mean, so they were working against they were
on the wrong side of history, on communication, strategy, on technology,
you know, everything. So it's it's they And of course
they would because you can't go you can't use these
inherently popular, you know, grassroots and horizontal communications methods that

(48:46):
are afforded to us today. You can't use them to
promote and have succeed an anti popular message. So it's
not just a technological problems like okay, so you can
see it's kind of like the you know, the old
Marsha mccluean bit, and but you kind of chicken or
the egg is it? Like the media is the message
or the medicine media. I mean, they're tied to this, right,
it's intrinsically, it's right. So it's fascinating to see them

(49:08):
implode like this in real time. But I think that
they are feeling like if they can keep the European
strong on Russia and they can play the bullshit game
on Gaza and pretend that they care about Palestinians when
they're the ones that have been running the entire non
solution for the past since like nineteen ninety two or something.
They're the ones that have been running this whole lie
that there's going to be a two state. They're the
ones that have been turning their back. They're the ones

(49:30):
that called the Palestinians terrorist time and time again, despite saying, oh,
there's going to be a Palestinian state. I mean, these
are the people that were the hypocrits. These are the
people that misled the voters. These are people that promised
the Palestinian state in a two state solutions sense, you know,
from Gosh. I mean, you can go back to the
late eighties, but definitely when you had you know, Camp

(49:51):
David and then you had like the White House meeting
with Arafat and Clinton. All of these things were supposed
to be the beginning with the establishment of the Palestinian Authority.
All these things were supposed to be a Palestinian state.
And it's been the whole probe, the whole Western global
pro Palestinian movement that actually worked to prevent this. In

(50:12):
you know, all of the Arab states that were Golf
Arab states and those like on the model of the
Saudist throughout the entire Golf had been acting as you know,
they're just business interest oil and they don't have to
recognize Israel. But they'd never made a quick pro quo

(50:33):
relating to say their energy markets and the recognition of
Palestinian state, right, I mean, not just in recent years,
we're just saying since the beginning of time, since well
at least since the end of the nineteen forties.

Speaker 3 (50:44):
Yeah, I know, it's funny.

Speaker 1 (50:45):
I've taken a lot of fire for saying, Look, none
of these people that are now all of a sudden
pro Palaesinian, Like, none of these people ever cared. Like
everybody's used the palest Indians for as their own political tool.

Speaker 3 (50:56):
Everyone everyone in.

Speaker 1 (50:58):
The United States, Europe, Israel, the Iranians, the Saudis, everyone,
and you know, and everyone's now I watched them, you know,
play this game out. I'm like, like, we're in this
position now because of that, you know, the Palestinians are.
Gaza has become what it's become because no one was

(51:20):
willing to actually, you know, not stop lying about it all.

Speaker 2 (51:25):
Yeah, do something else, anything else, anything else, I mean,
anything else. I mean the only the only rule is
it like Israel couldn't take it by force because then
people would have a right to declare war in Israel.
I think that would be the thing that people wouldn't
accept who live there, I'm saying, who are from Gaza.

(51:47):
But I think they would accept being uh an American protectorate.
I think they would accept that the local police, or
that the military were you know, supported by Egyptian or
Katari intelligence, and that it was Arab speed making even
at foreign but you know Egyptian soldiers for example, like
any any any variation of the Egyptian plan which previously

(52:08):
before all this drama and people forget and they have
like a fifty four hour fucking attention span. But months ago,
we have to recall that that that that Trump but
greenlit like in principle the Egyptian Summit plan on on
how to how it would actually be done with UH
with as an American protectorate, so with the with not

(52:31):
Israeli but with Egyptian and and and Gulf State and
you know local enforcement and UH and also inclusion of hamas,
inclusion of hamas. You know, this is like very similar
to and and and and what people need to appreciate
is that that level of discourse and that this is

(52:51):
what is being normalized is so important. Like when you
look at how there's virtually no violence today in Ireland
and how that was done by actually recking ignizing the
ira and may make as a political force and demilitarizing them.
I mean, I know there's a lot of idealists out there,
and you know, on that subject, you know, I'm critical
of of the you know, the plantation as well. Don't

(53:12):
get me wrong, but it's of Ulster. But I tell
you not there being violence and that that, and you
look at the living conditions of the Irish and Northern
Ireland and you know it's not terrible at all. So
the point is that that that that that type of
discourse where you know, all these negotiators from the from

(53:33):
you know, the Trump side have made positive comments about
the character of the hamas negotiators, the reasonableness of a
lot of the things that they're talking about, and I'm
seeing net and Yahoo being further and further isolated from
the process. So I mean, all all of the things
that have happened point that way. But you know, people

(53:55):
who just focus on I don't know what they like
you said.

Speaker 1 (54:00):
Yeah, what I was going to say is what I
see from what I see from from Trump and I
think I I I instinctually kind of came to this
conclusion a while ago, is that, like I think it's
I think it's clear that you know, Netanyahu is going
to be the one that winds up on an island
and what Trump is trying to do is save Israel

(54:20):
from itself and from Yahoo, and so has to be
cleaved off in order to get to some kind of
final you know, some kind of some some kind of
final arrangement on this entire thing. But that's a process that,
unfortunately books has to take time. You have to convince
people who have been propagandaised to something else to move

(54:40):
them to a different to a different position, right, And
you know, it's it's funny. That's I think the way
Trump has been handling the Ukraine strategy over time. I
think that's the way Putin has handled Ukraine. It's like,
start by running a war of attrition and a trip
out the Western built Ukrainian army along on the line
of line of contact for three years until they run

(55:02):
out of money, political will, material.

Speaker 3 (55:06):
And everything else.

Speaker 1 (55:07):
And eventually the political fatigue of paying for Ukraine on
the part of Germans as well as Americans eventually overwhelms
the desires of the leadership that are doing this for
cynical geopolitical reasons. I've promalgated this war cynical geopolitical reasons.
I saw it from prudent's perspective three years ago and

(55:29):
Now what I'm watching from Trump is every move that
he makes is effectively making that argument solely but surely
to a greater swath of Americans that he will then
have the political backing to neutralize the GOPE and the
crazy freaking liberal interventionists of the Hillary Clinton sect and
the Democratic Party and then eventually be able to go, no,

(55:50):
we don't need to do any of this. And we're
getting very clear. I think here we're getting very close
to critical mass in the US of everybody saying let's
just wash our hands of all of it, wants to
wash our hands of NATO and this. If the Europeans
want this war, they're more than welcome to it. Which
is why I thought it was really funny on Friday.
It was a Thursday or Friday when Trump just came
out of the blue and said, you know what, fifty

(56:11):
Paris on the EU, they don't they're not negotiating the
hell with you.

Speaker 4 (56:16):
Like, it's so obvious what he's doing, right, It's so
obvious that these two marrying all of these things into
one one singular unit, which is these people are the problem,
and you know, and there we are, and I see
it in every venue and He's just playing the same strategy.

Speaker 1 (56:34):
Over and over again, and they keep falling for it.
And what I can't understand is how no one else can.
I mean, I'm just I'm just sitting here looking at
this going I needed to talk to you this morning
because I needed to talk to somebody else who actually sees.

Speaker 2 (56:46):
Most of the shit like I.

Speaker 3 (56:49):
To the point where I can't. I can't.

Speaker 1 (56:51):
You know, I can't even use anybody else for intelligence
work anymore. You know, It's it's it's insane. I don't
understand how people can't see this.

Speaker 2 (57:01):
Yeah, people, people have too many attachments. They Yeah, I'm
just I just think, sorry to say, but I if
you allow me, I just think people have too many
attachments to h they don't want they can't just look
at things dispassionately. They they can't they they it's and
I and I think this is very interesting, Tom, because

(57:22):
I find it to be in uh kind of let's
say secular English speaking countries, the eight five countries, there's
a very similar trend. I'm not saying it in a
in a racial sense, but let's say Anglo Saxon societies,
whether you're in Asian or Black, that's been anglicized. You know,
we're just saying Anglo Saxon societies. You know, the political
culture is very very strange, and there's a lot of repression. Uh,

(57:44):
there's a lot of the Puritan influence in in the
in the psyche. And and I think that there is
uh an inability to separate. Uh. You know that in
the way that Anglo Saxon societies became secularized is that
we have taken our religious our political ideas to a

(58:06):
religious level, and and it has served as like a
substitute for for religion. And so what you're what you're
actually combating is actually, you know, different types of fanaticism
and and you know, pseudo pseudo religious commitments in the
language of politics, you know, and and and uh, if
you already have a dogma, if you already have a doctrine,

(58:29):
if you already have uh, you know, very simplified categories
and a low resolution view that you're comfortable with because
reality hasn't fucking hit you in the head with it yet,
then you can always sit back and and you know,
come up with all sorts of simplified versions and you know,
and uh, there's no there's no cost investment into having

(58:49):
a stupid idea, if if the reality of that stupidity
hasn't hit you yet, and I can promise you that
it will, because you know, being blind to the politics
doesn't mean that politics isn't looking at you.

Speaker 1 (59:02):
Great point, what I was going to say is like,
I'm let's let's give you a perfect example of what
i'm the kind of thing I'm talking about. I don't
know about you, but it's been pretty obvious that, for example,
like the Trump administration, for since the day I think
literally the day after Trump survived Butler Pennsylvania, that they've
been schmoozing Georgia Maloney over in Italy.

Speaker 3 (59:26):
Right, it's pretty obvious.

Speaker 1 (59:28):
That they and I've been banging my shoe on the
table like cruise chef for a long time, saying, Georgia
Maloney walks into like Trump did in the first term,
and says, and she's in the Italian deep state. She's
the first like true populist that's in charge of Italy
with a stable coalition and god knows how long. Right,

(59:50):
the Italian deep state is older, more sophisticated, and deeper
than anything the Americans. Relatively speaking, the American deep state
is there a bunch of fucking amishment relative to the Italians. Right,
this is the Italian deep state's two thousand years old.

Speaker 2 (01:00:05):
Right, So I'm going to say they invented it.

Speaker 3 (01:00:07):
Yeah, they created the deep state. Right.

Speaker 1 (01:00:09):
So, judging Georgia Maloney's actions in the first eighteen months
that she's in power, from that perspective of she's a
failed populist as opposed to just somebody who's trying to survive.
Right when she has coalition partners trying to whack her,
you've got Berlsconi was still alive, Mattias Albini was completely

(01:00:30):
compromised by by Davos while he was in power.

Speaker 3 (01:00:34):
Blah blahlah blah blah.

Speaker 1 (01:00:35):
You have all this happen, and yet somehow she's still
not to be trusted when she moves into Trump and
the Elon Musk's orbit. She has moved chapter and verse
in every way against the Europeans. She's not given any
real support to the Ukraine War. All she's done is
clear out all the old Italian military crap, none of

(01:00:57):
which works, and sent it over to the Ukraine. Those
can't even say it openly about really say anything openly
about it, because if he does like all of this stuff.

Speaker 3 (01:01:08):
I'm like, but yet she's still not to be trusted.
Are you kidding me?

Speaker 1 (01:01:12):
It's so obvious that Trump is setting her up to
take to take out Macron and Bonder Satan.

Speaker 2 (01:01:17):
Absolutely, yeah, it's it's clear as day. And I think
people they they there's a lot of different information. It's propaganda.
It might come from trusted sources, but the numbers used
for the wrong reason. It's the wrong number. I haven't
looked at this figure in maybe nine months to a year,
but we're still very far along in the conflict. At
the time that this number was produced, like, Italy had

(01:01:39):
given less than three hundred million with an m you know,
dollars two or euros to Ukraine period and it was
earmarked for humanitarian and then they had commitments of seven
hundred million and I don't even know if they had
had had commitments of cash alone that ever exceeded even
the one billion mark. I think they had seven hundred
something million in commitments and they gave less than half

(01:02:03):
of it in actuality. And then you know, once you
add up the replacement value, not the cost, not the value,
or if you were to calculate based upon the pre
war market value, because now all the goods are fucking
you know, sought after because Russia has been destroying it all.
But if you go to the pre war value of
like these, you know, Caesar and other systems that European
countries have trapped, and even if you calculate the replacement

(01:02:27):
value of those from their present military industrial complex, Italy
has given a tiny amount of money right to Ukraine
in this conflict, like like all of that considered by
the way, So it is you know what people don't see,
and it's a I mean, you look at the position

(01:02:50):
of Fizo and the Orbon you know, or Buchit you know,
and albeit and thankfully Serbia is not in the EU,
it's still in you know, the right community, so to speak.
And and that all of these leaders have directly confronted
UH Vanderleier and UH and Callous with with the reality

(01:03:12):
that they're never going to win this war and they
know it too, and they're engaged in a huge fraud.
It's a it's a grift, it's a graft, it's money laundering,
it's posturing, it's Atlanticism in the KAY and the scam
is to believe that there's a periods. There is a
there is a like a like a pyramid in this scam,
and it's they're inflating towards the imagination, the realization or reification,

(01:03:35):
if you will, that we can wait this out. That's
what the deep state in the US is saying. That's
what the U. S a i. D. Staffers are saying,
That's what the fucking all these atlantis is in the
EU are saying, are saying, we can wait this out,
you know, three more years Trump is out, then we
can get back on with you know planned senile.

Speaker 3 (01:03:52):
Yeah, oh I can.

Speaker 1 (01:03:53):
And I can tell you that I had this book
to Martin Armstrong about this directly multiple times, so both
on and off the record. He said, yeah, this is
exactly what I'm here when you know, our people are
hearing on the ground in Europe is that they really
do believe that they can just wait Trump out. All
we have to do is extended pretend for as long
as possible, and then we'll just get back to business
later on. Well, you know, hope is not a plan, folks,
because that's obviously not you know, Trump is clearly not

(01:04:16):
you know, playing for that end game, and Putin can
see it coming the Chinese can see it coming, like
everybody like it's all happening, and but they they don't
know what else to do. I you know, I always
go back to whenever I really think about.

Speaker 3 (01:04:29):
The European Union and.

Speaker 1 (01:04:32):
There and the way they negotiate, and I always go
back to the honest, very fakas during the Greek debt
crisis of twenty fifteen, when he walked in and he
has told the story a billion times, right about how
I walked in with all these plans, but how we're
going to restructure with the Greek debt and this is
what we're gonna do, and it's three and it's gonna
be good for you, it's gonna be good for us
and everything else. And he goes in with all of
his charts and this presentation and everything else, and then

(01:04:55):
he finishes and they look at him like he just
sung the Swedish national anthem. And then they go back
to doing exactly what the were going to do yesterday, right,
And they don't negotiate.

Speaker 3 (01:05:03):
These people, They never negotiate. They just set.

Speaker 1 (01:05:06):
Terms and they and the only thing they ever offer
you is the stuff they've already stolen from there.

Speaker 2 (01:05:11):
Yeah, I mean the way that the Troit had dealt
with with Greece.

Speaker 1 (01:05:14):
Yeah, yea, they and what they did Greece was was
you know, that was the It was the Greek debt
crisis that really got me to understand the is violent, right, I.

Speaker 3 (01:05:24):
Mean previous previous to that I was.

Speaker 1 (01:05:26):
I had a chat with Brent Johnson about a month
ago and he called himself at that point in his life.
He said, I used to be a kind of a
financial uh social financial justice warrior. I wanted to see
the United States pay for all of its mouthfeasance and
it and you know, and it colored my analysis for
years and years and years. And I copped one, I said, Brent,

(01:05:47):
I was in the same boat.

Speaker 2 (01:05:47):
You capt to that too. I coppt to that too.
I used to be in that boat too. So I
understand where these people are coming from. And I've been
through that tunnel and now I'm in the light. And
that's what that I think, that's just it's I think
we're honing now on. You know, ours shared problem with
the with this mindset is because we've been there, bro,

(01:06:09):
we understand what this is, and we we uncovered our
own implicit, unexplored limitation and engaged in deep self criticism
and even reconstruction of some parts of the psyche along
the way buck Man, and this is life. And if
you're not growing, you're dying. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:06:28):
No, I know, and I and you know, at some
point I've told the story many times. I said, you know,
there was a point where I was working for news
Max and I'm like, and everything I was doing was
not working. And here I am like staring at this,
going Okay, well, if this gig fails, like ain't and
you know, I'm going back to digging ditches and I'm
getting too old to dig ditches for a living, right,

(01:06:48):
And I have got to make this work. And eventually
I finally like just sat down. I will never forget this.
I spent like two weeks up in my office like
trying to like reconcile all of this stuff. And I
was having this massive crisis of faith. And I called
up friends and I talked to them about this, and
I talked to them and I finally I just.

Speaker 3 (01:07:05):
Went, I can't be a dollar bear anymore.

Speaker 1 (01:07:09):
I have to accept the fact that the United States
dolls market share, it's aw is this, it's aw as that,
and that the Euro and that the euro cannot it
cannot survive this. And and when I and when I
went through that process, I came out the other side
with better recommendations, with a better handle on what was

(01:07:30):
going on, and I could then better serve my customers,
because ultimately, at the end of the day, I'm here
serving my customers, and I can't just stand here and
keep saying the same thing over and over again, hoping
that I get to keep running this grift, because at
that point it's a grift exactly. Once you understand that
what you're doing is you're like, oh shit, I don't
want to be that guy. I literally I think at

(01:07:51):
that point that was the moment I said, I don't
want to be Peter Schiff. Yeah, I have no problems
at this point because I've been I've been sprayed about
Peter Ship for a decade now, so mat yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I don't want to be that guy. I don't want
to be Mike Maloney. I don't want to be any
of these fucking gold punters. I want to be I
need to be better than this, and I have to
be in reality. I have to deal with the real world,

(01:08:12):
and this is the real world. And again, folks, I
think both Joaquin and I just to make everybody clear
on this, this is not about Oh I'm so freaking
wise and susing it that I went through this terrible
thing and I came out the other side and listen
to everything I have to say.

Speaker 3 (01:08:25):
No, I'm like, I'm still doing it, Folks. Every day
I get.

Speaker 1 (01:08:28):
Up and I'm like, yeah, what have I missed? It's
like the main digression I asked myself. I asked myself every.

Speaker 2 (01:08:32):
Morning, and am I missing you?

Speaker 1 (01:08:35):
Like you on the podcast in order to be able to,
you know, catch up on the stuff that I have missed,
I will be honest.

Speaker 3 (01:08:41):
So yeah, I.

Speaker 2 (01:08:42):
Thank you for having me on today as well. One
of the things I wanted to say in kind of
exploring this, this question of alternative media and the as
you call the oppositional defiance disorder, It's like it's like
when you have an interpersonal relationship with someone and it's
like a toxic relationship because like every time you propose

(01:09:03):
let's do something like tomorrow, like let's do something in
the future, and it could be something small, and that
becomes like a referendum on every past problem or grievance
in the relationship, you know, even though the fact that
you're still all there together like means that obviously we
made up, we agreed at that time, and that agreement

(01:09:23):
and this working was sufficient then, you know, And every
time we propose to do something tomorrow cannot be an
argument about every unresolved imagine past grievance real or you know,
and so forth, because the thing that we're doing right
now is not a referendum on two hundred years of
American history. I fucking know that the US invaded country

(01:09:47):
once every two years from seventeen ninety eight onwards. Like
I'm aware of the fact that millions of people have
died as a product of view of imperialism. I'm aware
of the role of US Group Company and US Steel
and ten in Latin America and the desk quads. I'm
aware of the you know, I'm aware of the financing
of the Third Reich earlier on before he was the enemy.
You know, you know these things are we are we

(01:10:08):
know these things, you know, But but but it's it's
you if you're trying to understand what is happening today
and what is likely to happen and what the real
questions are and where the fight is. We have to
understand that, uh, the the the degree to which it
matters that there is you know that we shout and

(01:10:30):
proclaim things what is relatively insignificant to the to the
ocean of humanity that is moving in currents, and if
if to swim against those currents is often like a
very good hedge and a good position to like not
get things wrong when you're trying to understand things in
personal choice. And I think a lot of Libertarians make

(01:10:51):
the air of that working in their life in terms
of like, you know, individual choice rationale and their and
their own kind of game, how they might apply game
theory into their own life, to thinking that individuals like
Trump represent like what Trump himself would like to do
or or is optimal. They don't understand politics and you know,

(01:11:13):
how humans work dynamically in the world and how real
problems get solved. You know, it's it's, uh, I wonder
to what extent people live you know, online and then
just they're engaged in the mental you know, self pleasurement.

Speaker 1 (01:11:32):
I I wonder about two we all, you know, we're
all The important part is to recognize that potential in
all of us in ourselves as well as everybody else
around us.

Speaker 3 (01:11:42):
And you know, you know, it's you know.

Speaker 1 (01:11:46):
And what's what's really it's not frustrating. What's become clarifying
is you know, you have to become an expert in
a little a little bit of everything to be in
order to become an ex for it in anything, and
especially when you're going to start walking in there, start
analyzing in these circles. I you know, again, I'll book

(01:12:07):
the Martin Armstrong I remember him saying, he said many
times like I never wanted to be a geopolitical analyst.
It was a trader like I didn't. But you know, eventually,
as the markets became more and more and more politicized,
I had to start adding that to my model in
order for my model to become better. It's the same
thing with me. I just wanted to be a gold guy,
buy gold and walk away. Well, I got news for you.
In order to be able to buy gold, you're now

(01:12:28):
looking at the most geopolitical all asset classes therefore next
to oil, and therefore you need to become an expert
in it and all of these other things. And now
you needed to start looking at the way the world
actually operates, and you know, together the last point I
think I'd like to bring up and get your comment
on this, and I think one of them will close
this out, which is the following. Just because there are

(01:12:50):
you have grievances it, there comes a point where if somebody,
if one of the groups in that that you've been analyzing,
makes a fundamental shift to change their behavior, and they
make that change and it's obvious, then you have to

(01:13:11):
at the very least not even if you don't want
to accept it, that's fine, you have to be able
to analyze it as if you do accept it and
express it. This is the problem that neo cons have
about the Russians, This is the problem that anti Americans
have about America. America is changing, folks. It is changing
for the better. It is going to be slow, painful,

(01:13:32):
ugly and obnoxious at times.

Speaker 2 (01:13:36):
Yeah, and Americans are the ones that are good and
Americans are going to be the ones that are the
heavy lifting in that. By the way, like people around
the world that have some legitimate and other times many
legitimate prievances with American imperialism will be happy to know
that not only is America becoming a better actor in
the world today. But Americans are going to pay for

(01:13:57):
it more than anyone else. And if that's not bear
to everyone else, I don't know what is.

Speaker 1 (01:14:03):
Exactly, And this is it's in many ways it's the
same thing that you can you can level that same
criticism at the British for the British Empire. But here's
the one. This is and I'm going to leave you.
The one last point was having had a discussion with
my friend Ian Burling Game.

Speaker 3 (01:14:18):
About the history of Europe.

Speaker 1 (01:14:20):
The real the real reality here is that what if
all of these people are really the scapegoats and we've
never really had any discontinuity of who actually runs who's
actually been running this massive sye oup on us for
all these times? And your anger at the scapegoat, which
is in the modern scapegoat post World War two, is
the American's pre war. Previous to that, it was the British.
What if it's always.

Speaker 3 (01:14:41):
Been what I like to call Davos.

Speaker 1 (01:14:44):
And when I had finally had that insight, I started
to watch how things were being shaped. I'm like, oh,
we're being set up. And the same way that I
felt like Jack Dorsey was the scapegoat for the censorship
that was happening at Twitter.

Speaker 3 (01:14:56):
The board was making all the decisions. Jack Dorsey was captured.

Speaker 1 (01:14:59):
He was he was the guy we were supposed to
pour all of our hatred into and then focus all
of our program on him. And then when they get
rid of him, Twitter gets Twitter's board gets a free pass.

Speaker 2 (01:15:10):
Yeah, they're like from Central casting, exactly exactly.

Speaker 3 (01:15:14):
That's the phrase.

Speaker 2 (01:15:15):
I like.

Speaker 1 (01:15:16):
Great, So I don't know, but if you want to,
like add a little bit of car on that and
we'll call it a day and then we'll move on.

Speaker 2 (01:15:23):
Oh you know what I know, I h I think
you said it very well. I'm doing a live stream
a few times a week on at New Resistance on Telegram.
I'm doing the news that I think is important or
that I'm paying attention to, which is not everything happening
in the world, but it informs my outlook and if

(01:15:44):
it's something I've posted on that channel, it's something that
I'm definitely talking about and definitely on my mind. And
so you know, folks check that out. It's entirely free
to that channel, of course, and the live streams, if
you catch them, free also for you anyone who catches can
catch him.

Speaker 3 (01:16:01):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:16:01):
No, they are very valuable, and I know that I
don't always. I don't always. I try to stay away
from Telegram on a daily basis because it's too much.
But I have an entire community that takes that takes,
that distills out the best of Telegram, and I can
tell you that on a regular basis, whenever I see
something from Joaquin, I read that over everything else, because
invariably I'm done with it.

Speaker 3 (01:16:22):
I'm like, do it.

Speaker 1 (01:16:24):
Thank you, because like what you said this morning about Trump,
and I'm going to link to that particular post for
the show notes. What you said about Trump this morning
was the reason why even though I'm still insanely busy
right now and behind the behind from taking ten days off,
I'm like, no, no, we're doing the podcast this morning
because Joaquin's on top of it, as he always is,

(01:16:44):
and I really appreciate you coming in and doing the thing.
So he's you know, at New Resistance on Telegram on
TfL seventeen twenty eight on Twitter, patroon slash Gold does
and guns you guys know the drill. Well, we'll do
this again soon, Joaquin. Thank you so much for everything,
and keep her sick on the ass.

Speaker 2 (01:17:02):
Thanks for having me, M

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Episode #219 -- Xoaquin Flores and Unraveling the Alt Media Myopia

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